August 2007 - Posts
I have just received the programme for the Richmond Literary Festival. The line up of speakers is the usual suspects from the last three Literary Festivals. One wonders when they have time to write, but I am reminded that a book is a brochure and the author is the product. Something Charles Dickens knew well.
There is a remarkable cartoon of 'The Old Man and the Sea' on YouTube. It uses a painted technique which looks like it was drawn on a conventional film. However it was achieved it is brilliant, do have a look. It is the clip in two parts.
We are told that a manuscript is finished when the writer knows its faults but everything he tries to fix it makes it worse. I am reaching that stage on 'Horse Painters'. I can't work out if I should celebrate or be deeply depressed.
St Catherine's Monastry at the foot of Egypt's Sinai peninsula has a library which has endured for 1700 years. It contains 3307 precious volumes preserved by the dry desert air. Mount Sinai is sacred to Christians, Muslims and Jews so, amazingly, nobody destroyed the other's cultural heritage in the name of the one true God.
Now, a party of experts from Greece, Italy, France and England are examining every volume, preparing individual reports and recommending suitable conservation measures for each book.
The Fathers of the monastry are sensibly counting every page before and after examination. They have not forgotten that the world's oldest bible, the Codex Sinaiticus, was removed from the monastry for examination by a German in 1860 and never returned.
It is a long project, each book takes an hour to examine and photograph even before the report is prepared and conservation will take a lot longer. But what a worthwhile project.
My Bad Cop editor has pointed out a lot of errors in 'Horse Painters' which really do need fixing. There is an emotional journey from outrage to thinking maybe she has a point to agreeing with her sensible comments. As I can only handle the stress two or three chapters at a time this will be a long haul.
I am reading 'To Kill a Mocking Bird' which is brilliant and a worthy Pulitzer Prize winner. I have aborted 'Line of Beauty' as the prose was a bit like a Writers' Workshop submission. I have also aborted 'Atonement' because I predicted the outcome of a scene six pages from it happening. There was also an error of fact which two minutes Googling by the author could have avoided. I am turning into Bad Cop myself.
My attempt to send a photo of myself impersonating Ian Flemming to a magazine resulted in a computer foul up. I am now hoping to send it on a disc. It should reach the editor shortly after she decides I'm a complete idiot and she doesn't want it any more.
Full of enthusiasm following my editor's positive reponse to 'Horse Painters' I sent the updated version to another editor for more feedback. So far it appears that my characterisation is not up to much and one of the scenes is too violent, and she's only read two chapters. I told her children's books do have violence in them these days and she said it was her job to point things out and my job to decide what to do about it. So I fear there will not be much of a meaningful author/editor discussion. Worse still the scene she objected to is quite mild and nothing like the mayhem in chapter ten which she has still to read. And I thought I was just a heartbeat away from appearing on Richard and Judy.
The Man Booker Long List is just published. Out of the thirteen writers on the list the only ones anybody has heard of are Ian McEwan and A.N. Wilson. Ian McEwan is the bookies favourite, but as 'Atonement' didn't get beyond the short list at a previous Man Booker and 'On Chesil Beach' has received mixed reviews don't bet on it. My tip is choose a first time writer from an ethnic minority. The short list will be published in September.
My story 'Natasha' has just come out on Short Story Radio. Type in www.shortstoryradio.com and listen. I'm rather pleased with it, except for an annoying typo which was probably my fault and doesn't help the flow very much. However many times I revise I always miss something. It is amazing how typos get through the system. If you find one in a book it could easily have got past the author, the editor, the copy editor and the proof reader. You can't help admiring the plucky little typo.
The evaluation of 'The Horse Painters' arrived back from the editor. It was very positive, a few scenes need expanding and one character needs more back story. I have now fixed the problems (probably). The editor didn't think much of my punctuation, but then neither do I. The copy editor can sort that out in due course. So onward and upward as it were.